~beyond bluestockings~

Hello Bloggy friends!

I’m having a “why I love my life, my friends, and homeschooling” moment.  I have to share!

Those who know me may be aware I have a slight (Oh, ever so slight ) tendency to be a list making, routine craving, planning freak, with an allergy to spontaneity.

Monday is an important day in my week, and to disrupt Monday plans is…. serious.  But Sunday night my mother’s little Burmese cat was having her long awaited (by my children) first litter of kittens.

It was an event too opportune to pass up.  We bundled all the little people into the car and headed out to a science lesson that was almost too graphic for my delicate sensibilities.

Isn’t that cute?

Today, amidst much kitten watching, the girls set to drying apples after one of our farming friends dropped a box of granny smiths over. Blossy and I spent some time wandering at two year old pace over the farm and enjoyed looking at all the animals.

When we arrived home it was to a meeting with a family friend who is a mathematician.  He very kindly offered to spend some time with my grade 8 and grade 6 students to check their progress, explain some important to know, useful maths things, and generally encourage them in good working habits.

The girls learned much, and as valuable as the methodology, was hearing about the reasons to learn maths from someone who uses it enthusiastically.  What a lovely gift!

That should be enough delightful things for any one 24 hour period to hold.  But as an extra bonus I came home to a parcel of interesting homeschooling goodies from my blogging buddy and record keeper extraordinaire, Fee.

Some days my life is so perfect!

“No shadow is black. It always has a color.”
~ Renoir

This lesson was useful rather than fun.  The goal was to learn to observe colour, and to teach the beginning student the use of colour for shadow, without resorting to black.

The younger students had a surprisingly difficult time mastering the shape of the apple, and for this reason I am inclined to ignore Mr Stebbings directive to always draw in colour pencil. Colour pencil is close to impossible to erase, and with the disheartening smudges left after several attempts to reach a product they were happy with, a lead pencil seems kinder.

After teaching this lesson with the Friday group, it was much smoother sailing and a fairly quick lesson for the Thursday group.  If you must lead a group of children for this activity, I highly recommend either doing the lesson first before attempting it with a group, or re-writing Mr Stebbings instructions into point form.  While the instructions are easy enough to follow,  they are difficult in the form presented when each child works at a different pace.

“When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you, a tree, a house, a field or whatever. Merely think here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives you own naïve impression of the scene before you.”
~ Monet

I love homeschooling.  I love my family. I love my life!  (lol! not necessarily in that order )

We were packing to leave my mother’s house when the farmer rang.  There were some goslings hatching, did we want to come over the farm and see?  (Of course we did!)

The little one above was about two hours old.  Adorable, yes?

The farmer, at some personal risk, procured an egg for us to watch and to hold.  While he nursed his fast swelling arm (who knew geese bit so hard?) we were able to hold the peeping, moving, coming into the world, baby gosling.  It was pretty special.

As a child I spent many of my holidays on a farm.  I am so grateful to our farming friends for sharing their time with us and providing opportunities for my children to see such wonders.

Isn’t the miracle of life beautiful?!

Perhaps a more appropriate title would have been “Elsie’s Everalsting Trials and How She Wept Through Them”.

In announcing the LibriVox release of the first Elsie book, I mentioned how wearisome the crying was, and yet despite it, the book had some merit.  Not so the second offering!

The book continues precisely where the first book left off, which is the only explanation I can concieve for the title of this second book in the series.  There is certainly nothing to do with holidays in this volume.  What then does it encompass?  Well!!  There is the usual mushy-mushy father daughter stuff, followed by the crisis.

The crisis is Elsie’s father asking her to read from a moralistic novel on the Sabbath.  Now, I have no desire to debate the validity of following the Sabbath, or making our own rules about what that entails (Oh, confound  it – I confess I do, but this is not the post for it, lol!)  but this is the turning point in the book.  From that request on, Elsie’s father becomes an absolute monster of humanity; Elsie weeps through every second paragraph (I tell you, that wears very thin!); the father is then on the point of death; Elsie is then on the point of death; Elsie is then on the brink of insanity; and then the resolution – her father shares her faith after Elsie is pronounced dead.  Phew.  What an emotional roller coaster: or at least it would be if one could bring themselves to care for some of the most pious, self righteous, unrealistic characters to ever grace the pages of a book.

I have no problems with “unrealistic” as a characteristic of the story: I loved Little Lord Fauntelroy, and he and his mother were both saintly, but the syrup, and the histronics, and the affectations and the hysteria of the book are combined with some very trite theological attempts.  All together it is a literary emotional soup that is too, too trying!

My advice on this one (should you have maybe missed it ) is to give this book a wide berth.